


Winte Time

by DontAppallMeWhenImHigh



Category: As Meat Loves Salt - Maria McCann
Genre: F/M, M/M, OMC - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-25 07:22:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20720339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DontAppallMeWhenImHigh/pseuds/DontAppallMeWhenImHigh
Summary: As Meat Loves Salt is an incredible book. I couldn't stand to leave it not knowing how it ends ....Five years have been and gone and Jacob's past  is about to collide with his present...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to imagine what a life without Ferris could look like for Jacob....  
Winte is my own character.

Five Passing Years.....

"Will you lead us in prayer husband?" Catherine says with a smile as the babe on lap grabs for the platter.  
"I will and gladly.. for we are much blessed." Hathersage nods. "Lord we humbly thank you for this company and the food upon this table and beg your blessings on this our new venture....."

I lowered my head , still and quiet as the prayer was spoken yet as Hathersage ends still I say Amen. Old habits die hard...."Say rather Lord give us customers aplenty with money in their pockets"  
." We should stock more tonics. They sell well..." Catherine picks at her bread.  
"Well they might for many are but whisky..."Hathersage frowns , troubled by the decision.  
"They help with pain. Surely that makes them a kindness to those who suffer." Catherine rocks the baby.  
I remember holding Jacob's head against my shoulder both arms tight around his skull as wire cut gum and screams tore the silence.  
_Holding me down for the surgeon, I am kinder to you...._  
"What think you Christopher?" Catherine asks me  
"If we do not serve them others will..." I answer.

Hathersage takes bread and passes the loaf to me...." That I cannot deny.... Very well you both persuade me... Tomorrow Winte comes with furs.... that can furnish money to order more tonics ."  
"Winte...an odd name...." I mull it over. "Does it mean snow in his language do you wonder?"  
" It may well. He speaks some English I am told.. but leaves his friend to barter prices.. A group of three. One native and two English brothers , one hunch backed since birth... I was told we'll know the man to deal with by his height... Old Ruben said he's never seen a better made man... " Hathersage speaks quietly, knowing where such talk of strength will lead me.

"He never saw Jacob ...I'll wager this man is no bigger..." I set down my bread and push my food aside, all appetite gone. "Let us hope the talk of spoken English is true....for else we rely on signs to reach agreement as we did with the Swede.."

" Bear, beaver, wolf, mink...." Outside the store the pack horses were laden and a man, shorter and bent of spine was slumped in the saddle of a sway backed piebald mare, seemingly too short of breath to dismount.  
Hathersage nods to the stranger. "My wife has bread and cheese should you care to sup with us?"  
Izzy smiles. " My brother dislikes company but I would be glad to sit and talk if the invitation includes beer?"  
"Enough for two," Hathersage says.  
Winte stands to watch the road. " I wait."  
Izzy shakes his head "He will be sour if he finds we have done nothing while he yet idles at the docks. Leave the pelts awhile and purchase his precious washballs. That'll keep him sweet."

Winte's clothes are of worked doe skin, soft and supple with use and he walks catlike upon the strange uneven planks of the trading post floor with scarce a creaking board.  
From behind the counter I watch him choosing goods .... my eyes drawn to the bare slender body and lightly muscled wild grace.  
Tawny skin....like Jacob himself.... I think as he sniffs wash balls of lavender and sets some aside

Winte's dark eyes flicker fascinated over countless unknown objects both foods and labels that he cannot name. He gestures at the few glass beads in his inky hair.  
"Beads. I'll show you." I offer help.  
"Blue" Winte says. "Sky blue."

By the window Winte lifts a wooden dolls skirt to look beneath. "No woman parts" he says and tilts the doll so the man who had just walked through the open doorway to join him could see.

The tall man speaks..." I care not what lies between a woman's legs be she doll or real... we must have twine for the snares." 

The day stops frozen.... I raise my head to see who has Jacob's voice......and let fall the quill in a bloodstain of black ink.

The sun has darkened him.  
But still.....

_Black but comely_  
_ O so comely._  


He walks softly now for a big man set all about with muscle, too used to his dappled life among the trees and danger to be careless with the sound of his moccasined feet...  
A pale buck skin shirt clings to the shape of arm and chest and shows the deep set hollow at the base of his throat. In another lifetime I kissed him there and licked hot beads of sweat away....  
Hanging from his belt... two tomahawks and on his thigh a blade, tied down to the solid muscle with strips of rawhide. Native weapons and clothes.  
Jet black hair in a thick plait hangs halfway down his straight spine. With still a gloss on it like a ravens wing.  
Jagged scars tear apart the skin of one bare forearm , bitten or clawed by something sharp of claw....  
Low on his chin another wound... this one a bloody puncture through skin and flesh.  


"Buy the red...."  
He lifts a hand to hold a single blood red bead against the falling shine of Winte's hair.  
"The red against the black" he says again low and intimate and their eyes hold. 

It is a telling gesture.  
Yet he dared make it even here.  
Lovers.  
They are lovers.  
The knowledge of it drives me from stool to swaying feet in a scatter of falling parchment.

I am not ready when he turns and sees me there.... I am not ready to see again the muddy greys of River Thames eddy in his dark lashed eyes.


	2. Chapter 2

It is three long months before he comes again.  
Summer has come and with it hornets that buzz around the food , drown themselves in a flagon of beer and crawl upon the table as we eat.

I am not the first to see him though I watch the door most days in foolish hope.

"Christopher..." One word from Hathersage is all it needs.  
He is there...filling the open doorway with his height and wide straight shoulders.  
And again I am not ready for the lust that always burnt away reason...

"Brother Jacob...welcome!." Hathersage is gone forward hands outstretched in greeting before I have so much as moved yet still I see the grey eyes land on me.  
"Just Jacob," he says and for the first time I hear a change in his voice as though he speaks aloud less often.  
Then Winte steps from behind him like a shadow....

Catherine never liked Jacob.... yet now she showers him with smiles as once Bec's did for he is still that same dark angel, unchanged and handsome.  
He smiles but once and that at the children who gawp and gather round her skirts.  
"You have been busy..." he says and Hathersage is pleased to nod.

"Brother Christopher..." he stands before me, grey eyes seeing all and I hate to hear the name from his lips for Ferris was ever my name before.  
"Jacob.... " is all I manage. Once I was prideful and sought to make of him a tamed dog that I could tell heel at my leisure....  
He turns his eyes away from my ruined mouth and my eye....

He speaks the native language.  
I am a skinned fool . Of course he would master it for he was ever hungry to learn all manner of things.  
Strange utterances pass for words between himself and Winte and I stand sick to have him speak to another and not care to have me understand him....

He wants dried peas and salt but cannot pass the cheese and thick sliced bacon by, pointing it out to Winte.  
"Bacon...." He speaks as though it is a marvel. "I've had none in a year."  
Winte pokes it with a finger and I see Catherine stare at the blood red beads in his hair.

"Pray stay and eat with us? My wife has made onion pie and there will be greens and beer...." Hathersage is kindness itself.  
Jacob's empty eyes settle on me....then pass on...  
"I would be glad to," he answers yet I who knew him best can hear reluctance.

Winte will not eat indoors. He takes a wooden platter outback to sit cross legged and eat while the dogs bark at him.  
Jacob says nothing but I saw their eyes meet.  
I would beg and grab at his arm in case he follows but dread he would off hand me.  
His eyes still slide away from me as though I am unclean.

"Pray seat yourself..." Hathersage urges him and in the urging I hear the pity he has for me.

Jacob stands and eyes the empty chairs and platters as though he has forgotten how to use them....  
I would beg him sit but that last day when I accused him shouting of _craft_ holds tight my tongue.  
When finally he deigns to take a chair I turn my head away overcome but the need to feast my eyes upon him draws me back.

"Does Sister Jane not eat with us..." he asks.

"Sister Jane...now there's a name I'd all but forgotten....her and her poor child." Hathersage says.  
"Indeed...Poor Jane! " Catherine agrees.  
I say nothing.

Jane. When I took her beneath the bushes I saw only my wife...with her wetness still drying on my cock I knew myself an actor on a stage.  
I went again to prove myself a man like any other stung by the memory of what happened in London.

Jacob looks at me with a flat unseeing eye. "I thought you like to have taken her to wife....There was love between you was there not... in the woods."

So then he knew.  


The words I want to speak pile up inside my mouth.  


I

"


	3. Chapter 3

He does not return.  
Izziah comes instead, a huge blue flecked dog at his heels that looks part hound.  
Shorter than Jacob or Zeb and lacking the handsome face of either it is only when Izzy spits in his palm and catches my hand in barter that I see Jacob in him at all.

Izzy stamps his foot at the children in jest until they laugh and scream and agrees to take a flagon of ginger beer readily enough yet I feel him look at me from time to time as though he knows me ...

"I am glad to rest before the fire," he admits. "After a day in the saddle my poor back grieves me."  
I ask him where Jacob is since I cannot ask why he stayed away.

"Jacob is gone upriver. Hunting a bear....they hopes to have its pelt before winter...There is nothing warmer to sleep beneath...." he watches me as he speaks. I school my face yet fear I give something of the truth away. _Will Winte sleep beneath it with him..._

"Bear. May God protect him..." Hathersage says. "A fearsome beast."

Izzy shrugs and rests his kind gaze on me. "As is my brother .. yet a grievous wound that cannot heal will bring even a giant down."

The children kiss Hathersage goodnight one after another.  
There were times in my marriage that I wanted this...  
But then there were other times when I wanted more. There were many men...

"How came you to lose the sight in your eye? Fighting in the New Model?" Izziah asks me.  
I shake my head.

The hour grows late and Hathersage is sleeping in his chair.  
Izzy turns his palms toward the fire before he speaks and I see he has Jacob's hands also.  
" I wudst ask you for some knowledge of a woman who was with you before the commons were cleared," he says."You knew her as Jane...."  
_"Jane,"_ the name is ash in my mouth. It coats my tongue with the taste of all that burnt and once again I am lost among blood and pain.

Izziah presses my hands....and does not know how much I long for it to be Jacob crouched there.

"What would you know?" My own voice sounds strange to me and I see him stare.  
"Tis a long tale and not one I am proud of," Izziah says. "The woman you knew as Jane was once closer than a sister to me. Her name was Caroline...she was wed to Jacob."

He was right it was not a tale for any man to be proud of. Two jealous brothers and one naïve maid. The girl smitten with Zeb who cared only for the chase, encouraged by Izziah who loved her to look instead to Jacob , since he saw that Zeb would only break her heart. "A cruel jest of her being love struck that went too far once the mistress found out and urged the union..." Then they were all bound in a lie meant only to puncture Jacob's pride....yet one she could not undo alone.

"I do believe Zeb repented his foolishness with Patience upon the wedding day...he was as stone...yet I thought Jacob the better man for her...he stood almost as handsome and like to be steward when Godfrey died..."  
In the print room Jacob had said as much to me and I too called him proud....me who went on to sleep with the wife he would not own he knew.

_Bad angel. _ Now I felt the pain in it.

"She wed my gaoler...after the child died," Those were hard times.

The hardest.  
When I woke I thought Jacob there.  
I spoke his name unhidden.  
I grieved for him thinking him dead among the ruins of our crops and saw him fall in dreams .

He was nowhere to be found.

In London plague emptied the crowded city as it did each year.  
Becs grew sick and died of it while still I lay abed weak as a babe, speaking his name if I spoke at all.  
Were it not for Hathersage and Catherine I would like as not have died.

Always I had fancied myself a leader of men.  
Yet now when others looked to me I shunned their company and pined only for him.

We all of us have a secret self within us that opens at the mouth when we kiss. I spoke to him of it once.  
He is more than that too me.  
If a Soul can seek sanctuary here on earth then he is mine.

When my strength was not yet returned I went again to the common, to that bush where I knew now he'd heard me betray him with Sister Jane.  
I had Hathersage crawl inside for me to fetch the box that now held all I had of Jacob to touch and treasure.  
There may yet be some message from him by hence I could find him again.

The box was gone and my hopes with it.


	4. Chapter 4

The next time he came it was raining and the leaves were all shades except brown.

I wished it was night, then I could blow out the candles so we could be alone in the dark without him seeing my ruined face.  
Perhaps only then we could speak without sight of the pain we caused each other.

"Aunt and Becs are both gone to their maker," I tell him and recall how I told him before that I could not bear Aunts loss without his love.

He stares at me in silence but does not tell me to sneck up

I tell him. "You were not there the day they came to clear us out. You would have been bought down for nothing of worth save my prideful foolishness."

He looks at me as though he hates me. " I was there," he says.

"There? On that day?" I shouted for him amid the smoke, caring for none save him.

"In the trees" he says.

I say again. "I am glad you were spared."

He laughs. "Spared, " he says and I see I am wrong.

"You pleaded for her touch... " he sounds forlorn even after all these years.

"I was a fool." I hear again the words that Izzy told me. _Jacob was starved of gentleness.. He may be big in stature but inside he is as needy as a child. _

"You'd never say it plain... I should have seen. I was less than your wife.... Less than Nathan... Less than Caro....for you said it for her..."

"You mean more than any." _I know it to be true_.

He has not the heart to call me liar but I see it in his eyes.

"Your wife. Why did you not claim her?"

He stares past me at the clouds. "After our wedding night she wanted none of me. Twas a butchery."

I remember how he came first to me. Tore at my clothes in hunger and bore me down.

How did he go to Winte.... I dare not ask.


	5. Chapter 5

The first thing I print in America is all but useless.

A map of a city that neither I nor Jacob will ever see again , excepting in a dream.

Yet as I view it the houses and the faces all return to me..

Especially his.

Once I used love as a weapon.  
But then so did he.

In the commons I wedged both heart and door against him.

He followed me like a lost dog.

He would have forgiven me anything until Jane.

That last day we sought him on the road for he was missing.  
I thought him gone..

I accused him of craft , shouted it into his face, though he looked fit to drop but twas not in anger but from fear that I abused him.

Once he asked me who would save me from my own foolishness if he would not.

It was a truth I only came to understand when he was gone.

There was a time he could not stand us to be parted.  
I saw him one time at a window watching me as I walked the length of the street.  
I could have looked up and given him some sign that I stood witness to his patient love  
But I did not.

Now months come and go and he is far from me.  
Should he be dead who would know to tell me.

At night I lie alone and aching .  
I torment myself with visions of him in a bed that I have never seen.  
I know him to be passionate.  
Does he ease his body inside Winte as he did with me  
Does he play the whore with mouth and tongue  
_Filthy darling._

When first I slicked his cock with goose grease he looked unsure  
Practised I knelt beside the bed  
And as he kissed my neck I twisted hungry for his tongue

I had but been with youth and next to them he stood a man and used me as one.

Grappled to his chest  
Cock deep in fundament  
I knew myself lost to this  
Unless I stood firm  
For it was a madness like no other.

He groans and empties seed inside Winte in my tormented dreams and I am hollowed out with nothing more than jealousy.

I cannot sleep  
By day i am unfit  
At night my dreams unman me.

He sends Izzy again when he could have come himself and I despair.

I stand a humbled man and beg Izzy to bring the map to him

He sits astride his horse taller than I   
Hunchbacked  
And I envy him for he goes now where Jacob is

"He fears the pain..." Izzy tells me."Do not believe him indifferent. "

I lie awake and grieve though he is not dead and merely cold to me.

_Speak to me Jacob do not play the tyrant..._

Were he to come again to me I would throw away the door wedge and never shut him out again.


	6. Chapter 6

On a wet spring day I find him outside the store before we are even open.

Rain pours from the sky and paints his horse a deeper black that seems to bleed into the white.  
Great lines of forked lightning reach the ground.  
The horse prances in the mud as thunder rumbles above .

All that commotion and he stands unmoved.

Inside the store he drips water upon the rough hewn floor in spreading dusty drops.

"You are wet." I say stupidly.

I don't speak the other words  
Though they crowd round me  
Begging to be said aloud  
Promising , each and every one of them , to change his heart.

_I belong to you._

I cannot speak for desire.

He backs me against the wall , leans all his weight on me as though to crush me. "I hear a voice inside my skull..." he says.

I am starved for his kiss. Chasing his hard mouth with my own.  
Besotted and feverish I suck salted sweat and cold rain from his skin.  
Inside his wet clothes I palm his prick and squeeze it hard enough to leave bruises.

"Is it love ?" He says through gritted teeth as he comes.

Once I showed him my manhood as proof  
And he said _that can love thousands_ and asked again for my heart.

Now I stumble over my words and beg him to say it also.  
Jacob Jacob Jacob  
I love you as no other.

He calls me Ferris and I cannot hold back, I fall spent against him as I come.


	7. Chapter 7

He does not come again for a month.

When he does I see him talking outside before he comes in.

Winte's horse swishes its tail and Jacob strokes its twitching skin, close to Winte's bare thigh.

I cannot breathe for jealousy  
It scalds me

Winte is young and whole.

My eye is blind and will never see again  
My smile drops low and my lip is scarred.  
Knee, hip, arm and back all pain me.  
Beneath my clothes I am covered in scars.

He used to pull back the cover to see me bare.  
He thought me asleep.  
What would he see now?  
A broken man.

How can he feel for me what once he did.  
I am not the same.

He greets me first  
With his height and his strength and his beauty  
I smile back and only know my smile lacking when I see his face change.

I cannot watch him .  
I cannot hear his voice.  
I cannot see him here with Winte.

I make excuses and I go.

Outback in the storeroom full of his furs I wipe my face  
Unmanned.  
If I could undo all  
Have us back in my bed  
That first night and never leave it,  
I would do so  
But since I cannot  
I must be who I am now.

I do not hear him coming  
All sudden he is stood  
Before me.  
"Do you do this again to me?" he says and there is a flare of anger

He traps me easily enough  
Arms leaning either side of me.  
This close I can smell his skin  
He has slept close to smoke.

"Begone I have better...." He speaks harshly.  
_I know it. I know he does_.  
I push against him blindly.  
"Is that it? " Bitterly he asks me "Am I again your dancing bear and you find better entertainment now? "

.

"No ...." I speak so far  
I can say no more.  
Then what?" His face changes.  
He believes he knows.  
"Is it a woman?" His voice is torn apart.... "God I am the worlds biggest fool."

"There is no woman!" I speak fast.  
The breath he takes is uneven.  
Pained.  
"Then what?"

"Look at me!" I say  
I am angered it needs saying.

He looks  
"Are you sick?"  
I shake my head.  
"Then what am I looking at?" he says.  
"What I am now..." I say and the truth chokes me.

"A storekeeper....?" He suggests.

_God he was ever slow to see..._  
He stares down at my face.  
I cannot hold my eye open.  
Weak the lid slides up and down,  
Blinks.  
He must see it now. How could he not.  
"Now do you see ?" I say.

He draws breath  
Exhales it hard so it stirs my hair.  
"Are you a jug of cream gone sour?" He asks. "I see a man."  
"Not the same man ..." I rush the words and stumble over them.

He stares me down...  
"Are you that same Christopher Ferris late of Chepside....who once fought in the New Model?"  
It is a mad thing to ask me.  
"No..." I reply.

He shakes his head at my obstinacy.  
Leans in , head lowered, to nose at my hairline.  
"You hair is scented and fair as his was..." His voice is warm, his words breathe heat over my skin.  
He places his lips over my useless fluttering eye and I close it by instinct...  
He presses his tongue to it and licks across my lashes... "Taste the same..."   
He leans in close, we are hip to hip and his arousal is hot against my own, only clothing between us.... I open my mouth to gasp and his tongue presses in....  
He breaks the kiss panting... "Kiss the same...."  
He seals his mouth to mine and robs me of breath and reason....  
Against me hard muscle and a harder prick. He thrusts frantic as though we will fuck standing.... his mouth hard and fierce against my own till my tongue aches.... ....

When he breaks the kiss I moan aloud.  
"Sound the same..." he says with that same pride and in one move he locks me round and lifts me .....

He holds me locked in his arms  
Face to face  
As though I weigh nothing.  
Though I am a grown man my legs dangle like a shoeless child.

"From the heart, Ferris.  
From the place that counts. Are you my own?"

_From the heart_  
_ From the place that counts_  
_ I will love you forever_

_I belong to you._

_I have not the breath_  
_ With his arms hard round me_  
_ For so many words._

"Yes..." I say. "If you want me."

He laughs. "I hear a Voice inside my head. Yet you are mad enough for both of us it seems. I have always wanted you."


End file.
